Northern New Mexico
I live in a landscape
starving for sky’s affection.
Desert’s high plain acts,
since leaves last winded away,
like an orphaned child.
Green skin peeled off,
raw flesh crying out
for salve of rain.
To be fair, sky conjures
clouds of white frothy,
filamentous beauty.
An occasional verse
of thunder,
a song of light,
mostly a prelude
to spare emptiness.
Perhaps I dream it,
but I hear in sleep
earth’s keening call.
A towering rumbling
sweeps down
from the peaks in reply.
It echoes across
Rio Grande’s
Puebloan valley.
Its fields and ranges,
bled-out,
barnacle-hard.
Have ancient
Indian prayers
seized sky’s ear?
Soil’s weeping quiets.
As if full, pendulous
breasts of clouds
find its seared lips.
I awake at day break,
step outside in bare feet.
Revel in sky’s succor,
earth’s yielding
mantle of rebirth.
